2021–2022 state of our JCMR

In 2021, there were 136 articles published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (JCMR), including 122 original research papers, six reviews, four technical notes, one Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR) guideline, one SCMR position paper, one study protocol, and one obituary (Nathaniel Reichek). The volume was up 53% from 2020 (n = 89) with a corresponding 21% decrease in manuscript submissions from 435 to 345. This led to an increase in the acceptance rate from 24 to 32%. The quality of the submissions continues to be high. The 2021 JCMR Impact Factor (which is released in June 2022) markedly increased from 5.41 to 6.90 placing us in the top quartile of Society and cardiac imaging journals. Our 5 year impact factor similarly increased from 6.52 to 7.25. Fifteen years ago, the JCMR was at the forefront of medical and medical society journal migration to the Open-Access format. The Open-Access system has dramatically increased the availability and JCMR citation. Full-text article requests in 2021 approached 1.5 M!. As I have mentioned, it takes a village to run a journal. JCMR is very fortunate to have a group of very dedicated Associate Editors, Guest Editors, Journal Club Editors, and Reviewers. I thank each of them for their efforts to ensure that the review process occurs in a timely and responsible manner. These efforts have allowed the JCMR to continue as the premier journal of our field. My role, and the entire editorial process would not be possible without the ongoing high dedication and efforts of our managing editor, Jennifer Rodriguez. Her premier organizational skills have allowed for streamlining of the review process and marked improvement in our time-to-decision (see later). As I conclude my 6th and final year as your editor-in-chief, I thank you for entrusting me with the JCMR editorship and appreciate the time I have had at the helm. I am very confident that our Journal will reach new heights under the stewardship of Dr. Tim Leiner, currently at the Mayo Clinic with a seamless transition occurring as I write this in late November. I hope that you will continue to send your very best, high quality CMR manuscripts to JCMR, and that our readers will continue to look to JCMR for the very best/state-of-the-art CMR publications.


Background
The JCMR is the official publication of the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR). In 2021, the JCMR published 136 articles published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (JCMR), including 122 original research papers, six reviews, four technical notes, one Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR) guideline, one SCMR position paper, one study protocol, and one obituary (Nathaniel Reichek). The 2021 publication volume was up 53% from 2020 (n = 89) with a corresponding 21% decrease in manuscript submissions from 435 to 345. This led to an increase in the acceptance rate from 24 to 32% (the slight mathematical difference in acceptance/submissions is related to submission year and publication year). As might be expected, COVID-19 publications [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] and COVID-19 vaccination publications (8) were plentiful, with 8 published in 2021.
In July 2018, the article processing charge (APC) structure changed with SCMR members who are the submitting author paying an APC of only $500, presenting an 82% discount to the full $2680 APC. Reduced APC fees are also available to those from BMC membership institutions, submitting authors from lower income countries, and for those who request a waiver due to financial hardship. APCs are waived for invited reviews and for Society publications.

Impact factor
Though only one of many journal metrics and not a consideration in our review process, the Impact Factor calculated by Clarivate Analytics is nonetheless a wellrecognized metric with which many readers are familiar and is a metric often considered by both authors and readers for submitting and reading manuscripts. I am pleased to report that the 2021 JCMR Impact Factor (which was released in June 2022 and is based on manuscripts published in 2019 (n = 430) and 2020 (n = 633) that were cited in 2021) increased from 5.41 to 6.90!. This impact factor means that the JCMR papers published in 2019 and 2020 were cited on average 6.90 times in 2021. This puts JCMR well positioned in the top quartile (34/142-previously 37/142) of journals in the broad categories of "Cardiac and Cardiovascular Systems" and the top quintile (21/133-previously 20/133) of "Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Medical Imaging. " Our 2021 5 year impact factor similarly increased from 6.52 to 7.25. The 2022 JCMR impact factor will be released in June 2023.
Perhaps more important than the Impact Factor is the frequency that JCMR articles are accessed. Our openaccess format allows for much greater visibility for our authors with the 2021 JCMR annual digital downloads now approaching 1,500,000!!-a threshold not achievable with a subscription/print publication of a relatively small Society journal. Open-access has "leveled the playing field" so that an electronic search allows JCMR manuscripts to rise to awareness and to then be downloaded without cost. This is a great benefit to our readers, to the greater scientific community, and to our authors. Data analytics provided by our publisher, BMC, indicate that the vast majority (72%) of on line manuscript searches are identified from a Google, 9% directly from the JCMR web site, 4% from Pubmed. The largest number of searches are from Europe (38%) followed by the United States (28%).

JCMR editor-in-chief leadership
Dr. Gerald Pohost (Fig. 2) from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA was the JCMR inaugural editor-in-chief (1999). During his tenure, the JCMR was published in print format by Marcel Dekker, Inc (Fig. 2). We are well underway for an organized transition to the 4th JCMR Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Tim Leiner, currently at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA. Throughout this transition, you can continue to contact the JCMR editor-in-chief by using the same email: jcmredi-tor@scmr.org.

JCMR editorial and management team
The JCMR Associate Editors (Table 1) reflect the international and diverse spectrum of the CMR and SCMR field. Dr. Long Ngo (USA) continues to serve as our statistical editor. Drs. Juan Lopez-Mattei (USA) and Purvi Parwani (USA) are busy every week disseminating JCMR news as our Social Media/Twitter editors. Tim has elected to keep most of the current team in place and will be adding several Associate Editors. Stay tuned! Jennifer Rodriguez (jcmroffice@scmr.org) has been our managing editor since January 2021 (Fig. 3). Jennifer has made tremendous progress in keeping me  Table 1 JCMR associate editors, statistical editor, journal club editors, and social media editors and the entire manuscript review process organized and on schedule. As a result, we have seen a marked decrease in our time to first decision time from a mean of 60 days in 2019 and 2020 to ≤ 40 days since she took the managing editor position in January 2021. I hope our authors have felt this tangible difference. We are fortunate that Jennifer has agreed to continue in her JCMR managing editorial role with Dr. Leiner.

JCMR Journal Club-now with CME!
A highlight of 2021 was the second season of our JCMR Journal. These monthly one-hour webinars are held on the 2nd Wednesday of the month at 11am ET. A link for the monthly registration is on the JCMR (https:// jcmronline. biome dcent ral. com/) and SCMR (www. scmr. org) websites. For three years, these monthly JCMR Journal Clubs have been moderated by one of our three Journal Club Editors, Drs. Scott Flamm (clinical), Raymond Kwong (clinical) and Matthias Stuber (non-clinical) (Fig. 4). On a rotating basis, each editor choses a manuscript that was recently published in JCMR. After a brief Journal Club Editor introduction of the topic, the presenting author has a 25-30 min presentation followed by a spirited 30 min discussion. We continue to offer continuing medical education (CME) for reading the manuscript and for July-December 2022 started providing CME for Journal Club attendance. CME for our JCMR Journal Club is another free benefit for SMCR members. Please join your colleagues every month for an informative presentation and discussion. Don't worry if you missed one. Recordings of the monthly webinars and a CME journal link are provided on the JCMR web site. Check them out! While you can receive CME for reading the manuscript at any time, you can only receive CME for journal club attendance when participating in the live event.
Like other JCMR activities, the JCMR Journal Club is a village effort. In addition to our 3 talented Journal Club editors, I very much appreciate the strong administrative assistance of Sarah Mania (Fig. 4) for the past 18 months. Sarah was responsible for coordinating  registration, the speaker presentations, CME, Zoom operations and recording, and subsequent posting of the monthly JCMR Journal Club recording on the SCMR website. The 2021 JCMR Journal Club selections were on a wide variety of topics (Table 2).

Manuscript review process, omissions, and suggestions
I reviewed the manuscript submission process in my report earlier this year [9] and will not repeat that outline. All manuscripts are submitted and processed through the http:// www. jcmr-online. org website. I encourage all authors to closely follow the guidelines so as not to delay the review process. By far, the most error that leads to review delay continues to be the omission of the names and contact information for at least two suggested reviewers in their submission documents. I ask authors to use JCMR preferred abbreviations (Table 3; https:// jcmr-online. biome dcent ral. com/ submi ssionguide lines/ prepa ring-your-manus cript/ abbre viati ons) and to use the terms "CMR" and "cardiovascular magnetic resonance" rather than "cardiac magnetic resonance" or "cardiac MRI. " While the abbreviation issue does not delay the review, it adds additional burden to the prepublication editing process.
I encourage authors to carefully consider the number of significant digits and reported p values in their manuscripts. For example, when reporting native T1 and standard deviation, would report to the nearest ms and not to the X.X ms or X.XX ms. While technically accurate, reporting T1 to this level of accuracy has no clinical relevance. Similarly, when reporting p values for the sample sizes of most JCMR publications, a value of < 0.001 is a reasonable limit.
All work submitted to the JCMR must be original and cannot be under consideration by another journal until a decision is made by the JCMR. Though a rare occurrence, we have encountered instances where authors had multiple simultaneous submissions. When we become aware of this, the manuscript is immediately withdrawn from further consideration and the authors are put on administrative warning.                         Table 4. Please join the ranks of JCMR reviewers and strive to be a Gold Star reviewer! As an added incentive, reviewers have the option to receive continuing medical education (CME) credit for providing a review.

Conflict-of-interest, reviews, SCMR guideline/ position manuscripts and SCMR committee papers
Conflict-of-interest manuscripts, those for which a member of the associate editorial board is either an author, acknowledged in the manuscript or closely associated with an author, are independently handled by a Guest Editor (Table 5) chosen by me. Neither I nor any of the associate editorial board are involved with reviewer selection or with manuscript decision. Our managing editorial office assists the Guest Editor with the administrative software/Editorial Manager. If a conflict-ofinterest manuscript is accepted, the Guest Editor is recognized in the JCMR publication with the text "Dr. XX served as a JCMR Guest Editor for this manuscript. " The JCMR does not accept unsolicited reviews. Authors are encouraged to contact the editor-in-chief (jcmredi-tor@scmr.org) before submitting any reviews. In general, we expect reviews to be authored by individuals considered experts in the field and receive considerable attention/downloads. All solicited reviews follow the usual peer-review process. Several reviews were published in 2021, including reviews on 4D flow in tetralogy of Fallot [10], dark blood CMR techniques [11], and COVID [12].
The JCMR is the official publication of the SCMR. As such, SCMR Guidelines and Position papers endorsed by the Full (or Executive) SCMR Board(s) do not undergo peer review. I review these manuscripts for consistency with JCMR style and abbreviations. They are then published in an expeditious manner. Society position papers included documents on Level II/independent practitioner training guidelines [12], writing standards for guidelines [13] and SCMR position paper on the role of CMR in women [14].

SCMR case of the week series
While the JCMR does not accept case reports, for many years, the SCMR web site has an active "Case of the Week" (https:// scmr. org/ page/ caseo fthew eekLD GPG) series, currently coordinated by Dr. Sylvia Chen. For the second time, in 2021, we published the prior year's annual case series as a single manuscript [15]. This unified publication is planned as an annual occurrence in JCMR to allow for these illustrative cases to be more widely available to search engines.

Continuing medical education (CME) JCMR journal club
For over 4 years we have been offering on-line CME credit for the benefit of our clinician readers and is a free benefit for SCMR members -allowing them to more easily fulfill the CME criteria for maintenance of their Level II or III certification [16]. This program has been a great success and was greatly expanded with 14 manuscripts in 2021. (Table 6). Please see http:// scmr. peach newme dia. com/ store/ provi der/ custo mpage. php? pageid= 20 for the complete listing.

Social media
I am very much a social media novice, but the JCMR continues to be very active on Twitter with the handle "JournalofCMR. " Tweets go out with the publication of each manuscript publication and announcing each Journal Club. This activity is coordinated by our two Social Media editors, Drs. Juan Lopez-Mattei and Purvi Parwani.

Gerald M. Pohost and Dudley Pennell awards
In recognition of the efforts of our inaugural editor-inchief, Dr. Gerald M. Pohost, (Fig. 3) for the past 15 years, the JCMR has awarded the Pohost Prize to that manuscript deemed by the associate editors and editorial board to be the best/most important manuscript published in the prior year. The associate editors and I select the Pohost finalists (Table 7) and the entire editorial board votes on the top prize. At the virtual 2021 SCMR Scientific Sessions annual meeting, the 15th Gerald M. Pohost Prize was awarded to Dr. Theo Pezel and co-workers for their manuscript "Prognostic value of vasodilator   stress perfusion cardiovascular magnetic resonance after inconclusive stress testing. " [17]. The Pohost Runner-up Prize was awarded to Dr. Angelica Romero Daza and colleagues for their publication, "Mitral valve prolapse multifunctional features by cardiovascular magnetic resonance: more than just a valvular disease" [18]. At that virtual meeting, we also presented the 4th Dudley Pennell Award in recognition of the foresight of JCMR's 2nd Editor-in-Chief, Professor Dudley J. Pennell (Fig. 3) to transition the JCMR to the open-access platform (a decision (spearheaded by then SCMR Publications Committee chairman, Dr. Matthias Friedrich). Their decision markedly improved JCMR's visibility and impact factor. The Pennell award is for that original manuscript that has most contributed to the Journal's impact factor for the calendar year 3 years prior to the award. The 3rd Dudley J. Pennell Prize was awarded to Dr. Wenjia Bai et al. for their publication, "Automated cardiovascular magnetic resonance image analysis with fully convolutional networks" [19] with the runner-up Pennell Award was given to Dr. José Fernando Rodríguez -Palomares and colleagues for publication, "Aortic flow patterns and wall shear stress maps by 4D-flow cardiovascular magnetic resonance in the assessment of aortic dilation in bicuspid aortic valve disease" [20].
Stay tuned for the 15th Pohost and 4th Pennell Awards that will presented at the 23nd Scientific Sessions of the Society this February in Ft Lauderdale, Florida, USA!

Theo Pezel
Prognostic value of stress cardiovascular magnetic resonance in asymptomatic patients with known coronary artery disease [17] Claire E. Raphael CMR predictors of heart failure in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy: the role of myocardial replacement fibrosis and microcirculation [24] Thu-Thao Le Multiparametric exercise stress cardiovascular magnetic resonance in the diagnosis of coronary artery disease: the EMPIRE trial [26] Yvonne J.M. van Cauteren Cardiovascular magnetic resonance accurately detects obstructive coronary artery disease in suspected non-ST elevation myocardial infarction: a sub-analysis of the CARMENTA Trial [34] David Marlevi False lumen pressure estimation in type B aortic dissection using 4D flow cardiovascular magnetic resonance: comparisons with aortic growth [35] Theo Pezel Long-term prognostic value of stress perfusion cardiovascular magnetic resonance in patients without known coronary artery disease [25] Reza Hajhosseiny Clinical comparison of sub-mm high-resolution non-contrast coronary CMR angiography against coronary CT angiography in patients with low-intermediate risk of coronary artery disease: a single center trial [36] Satoshi Nakamura Long-term prognostic value of whole-heart coronary magnetic resonance angiography [37] Ying Zhang Comparing cardiovascular magnetic resonance strain software packages by their abilities to discriminate outcomes in patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction [27] Aakash N. Gupta Direct mitral regurgitation quantification in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy using 4D flow CMR jet tracking: evaluation in comparison to conventional CMR [38] Luuk H.G.A. Hopman Impaired left atrial reservoir and conduit strain in patients with atrial fibrillation and extensive left atrial fibrosis [39] Andrew N. Jordan Morphological and functional cardiac consequences of rapid hypertension treatment: a cohort study [40] Shingo Kato Prognostic value of resting coronary sinus flow determined by phase-contrast cine cardiovascular magnetic resonance in patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease [41] Alastair J. Rankin Myocardial changes on 3T cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging in response to haemodialysis with fluid removal [42]

Tribute to Nathaniel Reichek
Last year the SCMR and the greater CMR community lost one of our founding fathers. Dr. Nathaniel Reichek. Nat was a friend and a true giant in our field. He was literally "in the room" when the SCMR was founded, served as our 3rd president, was a 2017 recipient of the SCMR Gold Medal, and was a tireless advocate for the United States CMR Advocacy Committee. Last year, the SCMR named the Education and Research Fund in his honor. For my tenure as editor-in-chief, Nat was often my "go to" person for conflict-of-interest manuscripts or sounding board. His command of CMR was almost unparalleled, and he readily gave his time to help the Journal and all who inquired of his opinion. While we didn't agree on every issue, Nat was a gentleman of high integrity and I miss him at multiple levels. We published our first "In Memoriam" in his honor [21]. May his memory be a blessing.

BMC publisher
For the past 15 years, the JCMR has been published by BMC, part of Springer Nature and a pioneer of open access publishing. Our current five-year contract with BMC ends at the end of 2022 and the SCMR has embarked on a search for a publisher (may remain with BMC but yet to be determined). Our new editor-inchief, Tim Leiner is the chair of the committee and an RFP was recently distributed. A decision is expected by mid 2023. Regardless, the Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, JCMR moniker, and Journal contents are owned by the Society. The transition to a new publisher (if this occurs) at the end of 2023 will be seamless to you, our readership.

Manuscripts-WordCloud
As in last year's review, I chose to create a Wordcloud (https:// www. wordc louds. com) of the 2020 and 2021 JCMR titles (Fig. 5). As in 2020, the most common JCMR manuscript title words were magnetic, cardiovascular, resonance with 2021 followed by imaging, heart, ventricular and myocardial. I hope you have found my closing annual "State of our JCMR" informative. I remain the captain until December 31, 2022, but as members of the SCMR, it is really your Journal for which I thank you for allowing me to provide stewardship. I close by again thanking the entire JCMR "village" for contributing to our success. Remember to also join us for our monthly JCMR Journal Club on the second Wednesday of the month at 11am ET! Wishing you a happy, healthy, and safe 2023. We take great pride in the health care advances enabled by the ongoing advances in CMR. Remember to also take a deep breath every day to enjoy the moment. Table 7 2022 Gerald M. Pohost Award Finalists. Dr. Pezel [17] was the recipient of the 14th Gerald M. Pohost Award. Dr. Romero Daza [18] was the runner-up Edelman, R.R., Leloudas, N., Pang, J. et al. Dark blood cardiovascular magnetic resonance of the heart, great vessels, and lungs using electrocardiographic-gated three-dimensional unbalanced steady-state free precession [31] Edy, E., Rankin, A.J., Lees, J.S. et al. Cardiovascular magnetic resonance for the detection of descending thoracic aorta calcification in patients with endstage renal disease [43] Li, S., He, J., Xu, J. et al. Patients who do not fulfill criteria for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy but have unexplained giant T-wave inversion: a cardiovascular magnetic resonance mid-term follow-up study [44] Loke, YH., Capuano, F., Cleveland, V. et al. Moving beyond size: vorticity and energy loss are correlated with right ventricular dysfunction and exercise intolerance in repaired Tetralogy of Fallot [45] Nakamura, S., Ishida, M., Nakata, K. et al. Long-term prognostic value of whole-heart coronary magnetic resonance angiography [37] Pezel, T., Unterseeh, T., Garot, P. et al. Prognostic value of vasodilator stress perfusion cardiovascular magnetic resonance after inconclusive stress testing [33] Romero Daza, A., Chokshi, A., Pardo, P. et al. Mitral valve prolapse morphofunctional features by cardiovascular magnetic resonance: more than just a valvular disease [18] Seraphim, A., Knott, K.D., Beirne, AM. et al. Use of quantitative cardiovascular magnetic resonance myocardial perfusion mapping for characterization of ischemia in patients with left internal mammary coronary artery bypass grafts [46] Thompson, E.W., Kamesh Iyer, S., Solomon, M.P. et al. Endogenous T1ρ cardiovascular magnetic resonance in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy [47] Zghaib, T., Te Riele, A.S.J.M., James, C.A. et al. Left ventricular fibro-fatty replacement in arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia/cardiomyopathy: prevalence, patterns, and association with arrhythmias [48]